117 comments to Unthreaded November 14 2011

In 1994, in southeastern Turkey, a Kurdish shepherd discovered the remains of one of the most astonishing archeological finds of our times. Göbekli Tepe.

19-foot columns expertly carved out of stone, decorated with sculpted animals that do not and may never have lived in the region have baffled the German archeological team who came to unearth this spectacular find.

The scientists estimate that the structures at this site are between 11,000 and 12,000 years old.

This would be 8,000 years before Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids were built!

It is a very interesting site and in a region where many travellers and traders would have met. Not sure about the claims that the animals depicted are unknown to the area – obviosuly they didn’t just get lucky and randomly draw real animals they had never seen or heard described.

A lot of reliefs are very stylised and they are hard to attribute to an animal.

Until reading your interesting post, I thought that the settlement at Çatal Hüyük was the oldest known human settlement — this is 2000 years older.
It dates from the very beginning of the Holocene Optimum as the Earth was rapidly emerging from the last major glaciation period which enabled the Neolithic revolution.

They were built by aliens, eh? Van Daniken will be thrilled. LOL. Their dating is way off.
There was no agriculture then. Therefore there were no cities as such. However, archaeologists are altering the archaeological record all the time. Catal Huyuk, now I remember that from early archaeology studies. Have to refresh my memory.

Depends who comissioned the poll (this one is pro ALP, others are pro Lib) – anyway by the time the election comes round the ALPGreens will have many more stuff-ups to show us. I will enjoy the ALP and Greens tearing strips off each other – should be great entertainment.

I think I may have accidentally stumbled on one of the reasons for the bizarre thought processes of many others of the AGW faithful.

It is this: they really don’t understand the concept of ‘common sense’.

I was truly amazed during an exchange at a Warmist blog, when I made a casual remark about the ‘sturdy common sense’ of a population somewhere, only to receive the reply:

> what’s this “common sense” thang, and how does it actually relate to logic, evidence, and science?

I wasn’t sure if he was joking, and made a remark along the lines that people who lack common sense are usually suffering from adverse mental conditions. Back he came:

> So in your view, reliance on logic, evidence, and science, instead of this indescribable “common sense” thang, is a symptom of “adverse mental conditions”?

I was staggered. I still am. But it got me thinking.

Lacking that bedrock feeling of simply knowing what is sensible and reasonable is a condition displayed by a great many of the Warmist faithful. It’s a symptom of something, but I’m not quite sure what…

I am currently reading, “Everything Is Obvious – once you know the answer”, by Duncan J. Watts. Prof. Watts is both a physicist, and a sociologist, and a recognised expert in social networks and collective dynamics. He is also a climate sceptic.

The book is about the fallacy of “common sense”. Common sense, by his definition, is the acquiring and acceptance of the rules and mores of a society, and a system of shared beliefs within that society.

This actually explains, why the AGW faithful believe they are right – they hang out with other people who believe they are right as well. It also explains why the sceptics tend to hang out together on sites like this – our common sense tells us we are right and “they” are wrong.

Jo’s mission is to not rely on common sense, but instead to rely on real logic, real evidence, and traditional science – not exactly what your warmist “friends” were proposing, but perhaps better!

The difference is in the definition of “science”.

Warmist science is based on several logical fallacies. Avoid those fallacies, and you end up in the sceptic position – a journey I and others have all been on.

But please, do not rely on common sense – it is not a universal phenomenon, and is never consistent.

I commend Prof. Watts book to anybody who is interested in how people tick.

Rereke…you’ll be horrified to know that I agree with you. If someone says, “its common sense”, I always have a strong suspicion that they are wrong. Compounding the problem as you describe is that the phrase “common sense” is itself used as a last resort of people who don’t understand the issue or know they are losing the argument.

Common sense suggested that the heavens revolve around the earth… I mean it is obvious and common sense will tell you it is true.

Whoa Tristan! It’ll take more than blatant assertion to claim expertise in these subjects — especially given your stellar contributions to the logical, scientific conversation (I’m thinking of “yadda, yadda” here.)

Perhaps you could give some examples of your claims? (Not holding my breath.)

Most of what I see from you is “drive-by” potshots and unsupported claims. When you are called on any of this, you usually duck and run to another thread.

Tristan, I am profoundly reassured that as you say, “I’ve not seen too many examples of logic, evidence or science on this site,” which indicates that you do recognise that they exist.

Congratulations. Great step forward.

A quantitative analysis of the term “too many” could be a possible next step. Then you might legitimately claim a meaningful contribution to the “evidence” and a contribution to science that surpasses the usual policy and funding driven fantasies of warmists.

Your’e bang on the money Rick.Never confuse intelligence with common sense.My brother is fiercely intelligent,a mathamatical physicist who studies black holes in space,child prodigy,the whole nine yards,and him and his mates are the stupidest bastards I have ever met.

I have worked extensively in the online security business, dealing with frauds like the Nigerian 419 scam, and it is noticeable that many of the most gullible people in this area turn out to be doctors, lawyers, bankers and so on. (They are also the hardest to convince that it is a scam, as well).

It’s almost as if they have come to believe that they are so smart that they can figure everything out for themselves, and ignore the common-sense lessons from antiquity, such as if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

It’s not an IQ problem, but something has gone awry with their EQ apparatus, I think.

from the link…
“There of course is the solar theory that sun spots and radiation from the sun has increased. I don’t believe this theory on the theological grounds. God created the Sun to be helpful for life, not destructive to life.”

Ah yes, the Unthreaded posts, also known as “the loony bait”.
Designed to attract the loons and keep their loony topics out of the main discussion.
And it will work.

I am not sure if the abiogenic theory of the origin of coal and oil is still a loony topic or whether it is of scientific merit. It is a minority view, but as we’ve seen before unpopularity does not imply falsehood. When the effect has been demonstrated in the laboratory it is certainly back in the realm of plausibility.

How about the undemocratic communist globalist failure called the European Union. Bunch of fat cats fiddling complete nonsense in safe isolation from the villagers, whilst Rome almost literally burns to the ground in debt.

As some of you may know, I am a big fan of Arthur W Upfield, who wrote all the Bony crime fiction novels. Those novels date from 1929 to 1963, and there were 29 of them in all.

I got hold of some of them in my 20′s and gradually collected nearly all of them, reading them mainly for the crime fiction aspect.

At a much later date, in the mid and late 90′s, I read them all again, this time taking notes, the idea trying to sort them into some sort of order as to the time line from the earliest to the latest. In all but a couple of cases they stuck closely to the publication dates.

On that subsequent reading, I picked up so much more than I originally did, and as you might expect with novels set in outback and regional Australia, the weather was always a topic for discussion, and in quite a few of those novels. Upfield did huge amounts of research into what he was writing about, and having actually lived the life himself, tramping to every corner of Australia, he lived the life of the characters he wrote about, and he detailed some of these discussions about the weather with surprising detail.

One of the big things that is mentioned in most novels is the reliance on Long Range Weather Forecasting, (LRWF) something these days looked upon as mumbo jumbo, even though one in particular has incredibly detailed recordings, and has around a 90 to 95% accuracy rate, that being (now) Hayden Walker, son of Lennox, who took over from Inigo Jones, and Clement Wragge before him, and now with concise and accurate weather details stretching back to before 1850.

One of Upfield’s novels in fact dealt solely with LRWF, and having done his research, Upfield noted even then, back in the 50′s, that Government was heavily involved in the ‘business’ of the weather.

The ‘man on the land’ was surprisingly aware of what to look for in regards to the weather, and they even based farm machinery purchases on good or bad weather predictions, and here you can see how something like this might affect the economy, hence the ‘Government line’ that LRWF was in fact mumbo jumbo, something that those farmers roundly ignored, preferring those long range reports to the basic guesswork of the ‘establishment’ weather predictions.

I became aware of Lennox Walker in the late 60′s and he had two weekday morning slots on local AM regional radio for ten minutes at a time, when I was stationed at Wagga Wagga, and my circle of friends at the time would mention that they (mainly their fathers) would never miss one of those reports.

So, while LRWF is looked upon as a ‘bit of a joke’, the accuracy is something that needs to be considered in ‘the big picture’.

When it comes to Government involvement in the weather, it seems that no matter how much things change, they remain the same.

As a city-slicker I had no need to pay Lennox Walker much attention. I do remember that he was held in high regard by those on the land.
As he did not have the benefit of satellites, real time weather mapping etc. does anyone know how he arrived at his predictions? And how accurate were they?

Clem Wragge started in the mid and late 1800′s.
Inigo Jones took over from him.
Lennox Walker started as a young ‘apprentice’ (for want of a better word here) and he then took over from him, and then he handed it all onto his son, Haydon, who now carries on the work.

It’s based around those 160 years of detailed records for nearly all of Australia, and also all four of these men used solar activity to assist with their predictions, and as I mentioned they are still running at a 90 to 95% accuracy rate, for weekly, mid term, and long term forecasts, out to 6 to 8 months and a year.

Other forecasters use lunar activity for their forecasts, but Lennox once explained that solar activity had more to do with it than did lunar activity,

Tony, thanks for this post – interesting in itself but especially so for me as my father, Leonard, was briefy an assistant to Inigo Jones at Crohamhurst. I vaguely recall Dad saying that Inigo was somewhat hard to get on with (though Dad was always thankful for being introduced to classical music by him) and so he didn’t stay on for long. He remembers Lennox Walker starting there just before he left. Had Dad stayed on it might have been Leonard not Lennox as the next LWF forecaster … and me now?!

Hi tony I have been doing some research on rainfall in sw WA and it is quite obvious the cycles that the rain goes through and this is just from looking at the records not even taking into account things like the sun and moons effect.

Bush bunny –
China is not the main winner…obama’s benefactors, General Electric, are happy…

14 Nov: Reuters: Doug Palmer: UPDATE 1-APEC leaders commit to green trade liberalization
Countries to identify targeted goods over the next year
* Plan to cut tariffs to 5 percent on list of goods
* APEC pledges to eliminate domestic content requirements
The green trade initiative represented an achievement for U.S. President Barack Obama at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Hawaii, overcoming reservations from China — a major manufacturer of solar power products.
A document issued by the leaders estimated that tens of trillions of dollars of investment would be required in the coming years to meet the region’s clean energy, clean air, sanitation and other environmental goals…
The pledge is a victory for Obama, whose administration pushed over the past year for a strong APEC “green growth” commitment. APEC economies account for about 60 percent of current trade in environmental goods and services…

CHINA SIGNS UP
“The commitment on environmental goods and services is huge. It’s a tremendous deliverable for APEC,” said Jake Colvin, a vice president at the National Foreign Trade Council, whose members include major U.S. manufacturers.
Chinese President Hu Jintao signed onto the plan to cut tariffs to 5 percent on an undesignated list of environmental goods by the end of 2015, even though earlier this week Chinese officials criticized the cuts as too ambitious.

China also had warned that the U.S. decision to launch a probe that could lead to anti-dumping duties on Chinese-made solar cells and modules could strain energy cooperation…
Hu told business leaders on Saturday that the region should pursue green growth “on the basis of (each APEC members’) resource endowment, stage of development and capacity.”
The plan reflects the Chinese concern by instructing negotiators to decide over the next year on the precise list of goods that will be subject to tariffs cut.
U.S. officials have identified solar panels, wind and hydraulic turbines, air pollution filters and sewage treatment pumps as goods they would like included.
Together, the 21 economies of APEC — which also also include Japan, Russia, Canada, South Korea and Mexico — account for more than half of world trade…

Another commitment calls on APEC countries to strive to cut their aggregate energy intensity — a measure of a country’s energy use and efficiency — by 45 percent by 2035.
Pang Sen, a deputy director general in China’s foreign ministry, stressed that was an aspirational goal and that the APEC commitments are “voluntary and nonbinding .”
APEC members also pledged by the end of 2012 to eliminate domestic content requirements that distort environmental goods and services trade.
***That is a victory for U.S. companies such as General Electric that been stymied in China and Asia Pacific by public works projects rules that lock them out…
Additional reporting by Michael Martina; Editing by Will Dunham)http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/14/apec-greentrade-idUSN1E7AD01620111114

We have let an unholy alliance of radical environmentalists, a corrupt UN, demagoging and rent-seeking politicians, power hungry and agenda driven agencies like the US EPA and their equivalents in places like the UK and Australia, unethical scientific and economic grant toting elites and their opportunistic academic institutions and an agenda driven media that control the message to their enormous benefit and the detriment of the world’s peoples and economies.

Because of their policies, we have seen an explosion of people in fuel poverty even in the developed nations – where many elderly and pensioners and poor families must choose between heating and eating.

Meanwhile needed energy sources have been denied to poorer parts of the third world because they claim that would increase the emissions of CO2, a beneficial gas that has NEVER been shown to have damaging effect on climate or health.

Climategate and IPCC gate showed how vacuous the so called settled global warming science is. But the media ignored it. As warming failed and sea levels stopped rising, the movement refocused on extremes including cold and snow that their own models suggested would become rare as proof of man’s impact.

We have learned nothing from the failed experiments in places like Spain where 2.2 jobs were lost for every 1 green job while 1 of every 10 green jobs were permanent and where soaring energy costs drove industry out of Spain resulting in 20.5% unemployment. In Italy, 3.5 jobs were lost for every subsidized green jobs and the world is watching the Italian economy collapse. Part of the world’s economic problems can be attributed to the unholy alliance’s work.

Why has the media ignored these facts and the real motive admission by IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer in November 2010 “one has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy.” Instead, climate change policy is about how “we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth…”.

For today’s ‘illuminati’ in the unholy alliance, it is all about power and wealth. They have built their economic and energy policies on a house of cards scientific theory that deserves to be thrown in the trash heap of history. We have to recognize the light upstairs went out years ago. The Dark Ages are back.

We keep getting told by Gillard and swan what great fiscal managers they are and how they have taken the hard decisions. While we hear a lot about the Euro Zone problems and how the world share markets are worried about haw Greece and Italy will resolve their problems, it worth taking a look at where this Gillard Government is taking us.

According to the OECD’s own figures the only countries that have grown their Government debt as a percentage of GDP since the start of 2007 by more than Australia are Iceland, Ireland and by just a fraction of a percent the UK beat.

Australia’s Government debt projected to the end of 2011 will be 91.5% greater than at the end of 2006. This compares with an average Government Debt growth of just 37.4% over all 30 OECD countries over the same period.

Even financial basket cases Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and USA have managed to cap the growth in their Government debts over that period at 35.9%, 9.9%, 60.3%, 42.8% and 66.3% respectively.

Many OECD countries which do not have the advantage of Australia’s natural resources managed to reduce Government debt over the same period including Israel, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland. Yet the IMF voted Wayne Swan treasurer of the year!

Who couldn’t manage an economy by increasing debt by 91.5% over 5 years?

To prove I’m not a bogan my suggestion is that Italy should have looked in a different direction for someone to get them out of the financial mess it is in. My suggestion would be the appointment of anyone who had been able to successfully run say a grocery store. It is quite evident that the financial problems that Europe, the US and others are in have occurred under the tutelage of vast armies of brilliant economists. Have I missed something?

“My suggestion would be the appointment of anyone who had been able to successfully run say a grocery store.”
As a UK wunderkind of the 1980′s, led by Saint Margaret T, daughter of a High Street grocer, I must deplore her for her initial warmist position. Fortunately, fate has left me a window I can work my way through to forgiveness given: “She recognised how distortions of the science had been used to mask an anti-capitalist, Left-wing political agenda which posed a serious threat to the progress and prosperity of mankind.”

How is it that received opinion on climate change issues, and far-reaching policy conclusions arising from it, have won such widespread, continuing, confident and unqualified support, official and unofficial, including endorsement at the highest political levels and by central economic departments of state, over nearly a quarter of a century?

I think the answer is straightforward: it is the shared conviction of all these persons and institutions that “the science” of climate change can now be taken as “settled”.

This response provokes the further question: What is the basis of this shared conviction? Here again, I think there is a straightforward answer. Received opinion everywhere reflects, and has throughout accepted and relied on, the scientific advice provided to governments through what I call the official expert advisory process.

That advice comes from many sources; but the main single channel for it, indeed the only channel of advice for governments collectively, has been the series of massive and wide-ranging Assessment Reports produced by the IPCC from 1990 onwards. The fourth and most recent of these, referred to for short as AR4, was completed and published in 2007. Work on its successor is now well under way.

For more than twenty years, then, governments and international agencies, and a great many outside observers too, have put their trust in the official expert advisory process as a whole and the IPCC process in particular. They continue to do so. However, there is now a substantial body of evidence to suggest that their trust is unwarranted.

Some time ago Adam Smith (known as Smiffy to his closest friends) and i had a discussion about the future prospects of selling uranium to India.

Smiffy called me all the names under the sun when i suggested we were considering it and as predicted here we are discussing it. I do want but do not expect an apology from Smiffy, and so the question needs to be asked should we export uranium to country that refuses to sign the nuclear non proliferation treaty NNPT?

Before we begin lets look at the current state of play with our confused and befuddled government.

1, We can mine and export coal to other countries for the purpose of generating cheap electricity but we cannot use it ourselves because it is a polution that is destroying the planet.

2, We can mine and export uranium to other countries for the purpose of generating cheap electricity but we cannot use it ourselves as it is very, very dangerous and if things go wrong can wreak more destruction than any increase in CO2.

So with the above almost comical government stance in mind we now turn our attention to the NNPT. There are 189 countries that have signed the NNPT and 4 that have refused and they are:

The purpose of the NNPT is to ensure countries who have the ability to make nuke bombs do not. One way of ensuring this is to allow weapons inspectors access to the site to check on what is going on.

For example to generate power you need to enrich uranium to 2% for a heavy water reactor, 20% for light water reactor and research uses and above 80% is considered weapons grade uanium. Iran is a classic example of this process, Iran has signed the NNPT and with Russian help have built a nuclear reactor for the purposes of creating electricity. The IAEA have constantly inspected the site and have found no evidence that Iran are trying to make a bomb although there is constant wild speculation that they are.

However the clandestine weapons manufacture of the 4 above mentioned non signatories remains clandestine. So to add to the confused and befuddled list above we can now add the following:

3, We are happy for Israel to have the 4th largest nuclear arsenal (estimated) on the planet and we are happy for Israel to continue to develop their nuclear capabilities.

4, We are happy (potentially) to give India more uranium for them to use in their nuclear arsenal development thus escalating/inflaming the nuclear arms race between them and Pakistan.

5, We are happy to bomb The Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak on an Israeli hunch only to find years later that it was only a reactor for generating power which they were allowed to build (NNPT)

6, We are happy to bomb a Syrian factory on another Israeli hunch that it was a clandestine nuclear laboratory which once again proved to be a Israeli falsehood.

7, We are happy to participate in crippling sanctions against Iran based on their desire to generate cheap electricity using nuclear power

8, We will sit idly by and watch the drum beats of war grow louder to bomb, bomb, bomb Iran

And yet we are quite happy to sell uranium to a country that refuses to sign the NNPT.

Firstly my comment 16 was aimed more at the hypocrisy of our current government a hypocrisy touched on Tony and not so much to be raised as a topic of discussion because i know i am a bit of a lone wolf on this subject (apart from Kevin maybe).

But now that you have brought it up i should do the honourable thing and reply now before we can go any further we need to understand the history of what has transpired. Firstly after WWII the British gave the jewish community in Europe safe haven in Palistine under the “British Mandate for Palistine”, we then had the creation of the United Nations and in 1947 resolution 181 was voted and greed upon. However leading up to 181 the Israelis or should i say the Zionist component engaged in acts of terrorism against the Palistinians to drive them out of their country something that still goes on today.

181 stated basically that there will be a two state solution (sound familiar) but the Palistinians rejected it after all it was their country not the Israelis. So begun the 1948 Arab/Israeli war.

We then have resolution 194 which required the Israelis to give Palistinians their right of return (the ines that fled the Israeli violence) and to this day Israel has still not complied.

So as you can see things did not get off to a good start and have gotten worse ever since.

Below is a list of all UN resolutions against Israel (note this list only extends to 1992:

“…condemned Israel’s attack against Southern against southern Lebanon and Syria…”
“…affirmed the rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination, statehood and equal protections…”
“…condemned Israel’s air strikes and attacks in southern Lebanon and its murder of innocent civilians…”
“…called for self-determination of Palestinian people…”
“…deplored Israel’s altering of the status of Jerusalem, which is recognized as an international city by most world nations and the United Nations…”
“…affirmed the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people…”
“…endorsed self-determination for the Palestinian people…”
“…demanded Israel’s withdrawal from the Golan Heights…”
“…condemned Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and its refusal to abide by the Geneva convention protocols of civilized nations…”
“…condemned an Israeli soldier who shot eleven Moslem worshippers at the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount near Al-Aqsa Mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem…”
“…urged sanctions against Israel if it did not withdraw from its invasion of Lebanon…”
“…urged sanctions against Israel if it did not withdraw from its invasion of Beirut…”
“…urged cutoff of economic aid to Israel if it refused to withdraw from its occupation of Lebanon…”
“…condemned continued Israeli settlements in occupied territories in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, denouncing them as an obstacle to peace…”
“…deplores Israel’s brutal massacre of Arabs in Lebanon and urges its withdrawal…”
“…condemned Israeli brutality in southern Lebanon and denounced the Israeli ‘Iron Fist’ policy of repression…”
“…denounced Israel’s violation of human rights in the occupied territories…”
“…deplored Israel’s violence in southern Lebanon…”
“…deplored Israel’s activities in occupied Arab East Jerusalem that threatened the sanctity of Muslim holy sites…”
“…condemned Israel’s hijacking of a Libyan passenger airplane…”
“…deplored Israel’s attacks against Lebanon and its measures and practices against the civilian population of Lebanon…”
“…called on Israel to abandon its policies against the Palestinian intifada that violated the rights of occupied Palestinians, to abide by the Fourth Geneva Conventions, and to formalize a leading role for the United Nations in future peace negotiations…”
“…urged Israel to accept back deported Palestinians, condemned Israel’s shooting of civilians, called on Israel to uphold the Fourth Geneva Convention, and called for a peace settlement under UN auspices…”
“…condemned Israel’s… incursion into Lebanon…”
“…deplored Israel’s… commando raids on Lebanon…”
“…deplored Israel’s repression of the Palestinian intifada and called on Israel to respect the human rights of the Palestinians…”
“…deplored Israel’s violation of the human rights of the Palestinians…”
“…demanded that Israel return property confiscated from Palestinians during a tax protest and allow a fact-finding mission to observe Israel’s crackdown on the Palestinian intifada…”
“…called for a fact-finding mission on abuses against Palestinians in Israeli-occupied lands…”

Both these lists are woefully out of date but at this point in time they will have to do.

Yes Crakar24 – a real can of worms — the rights and wrongs are hard to make out but as you say the 1948 event was a crucial defining moment that’s hard to overlook.

Jews and Arabs had lived in the area in the early 1900s and things were not always smooth then but then you can go back 5,000 years and find continuous war right through the Holy Land. It sounds like Ireland all over again, it sounds like most of Africa it sounds like people.

The main point I was making was that the Palestinians movement has missed a great opportunity by not putting modern instant information availability / media scrutiny to best advantage.

Their constant sniping at Israel, splashed all over the media, makes Israel look like the good guy and gives the USA the moral cover it needs to veto in Israels favor.

The media problem that Palestinians have is that they give the very strong sense that they will not accept a Jewish state and will not stop until it is gone.

By contrast the Israelis say they will live with a Palestinian state that recognizes their fright to exist. Maybe they are lying – but in my view they are winning the media war.

It is all about the system of proxies. A can’t act against B, because C would come to B’s defence, and do something nasty to A, so A uses D to do something nasty to B, while E cosies up to C to take their eye off the ball. In the mean time, F is signing a trade deal with E on behalf of A, who is heavily indebted to G, who would really like to see B taken down a peg or two.

Simple really, if you know what is going on. Bottom line – everybody is screwed by everybody else. Treaties do that sort of thing.

Then, if Israel does something wrong , all they have to do is point the finger and say Look!

Obviously by the list above (incomplete as it is) people have been saying “Look” for quite some time which is why Palestine are seeking full member admission to the UN. Once they get that then they can take Israel to the Hage for war crimes and crimes against humanity which is why Israel/USA are in such a tither over it also the 1968 borders will be adhered to.

Cheers

You may not be aware but Palestine have been granted full membership of UNESCO by 100 odd votes to 14 just recently and in response the US has pulled all foreign aid to Palestine.

Kevin Rudd for all his faults is telling Gillard to abstain from the upcoming UN vote (abstain means you dont piss off Israel too much) as even he can see the US and Israel becoming more and more isolated on the world stage.

What I can’t figure out in this change of mind from Labor is that if it’s suddenly changed its mind on the sale of Uranium to India, why can’t we use the stuff ourselves for Nuclear Electrical Power Generation. If that’s what we are told India will be using for, then why oh why can’t we do it for our own Country?

If the mantra for this change of mind is ‘jobs jobs jobs’ for Australians, imagine the jobs created if we were to use it ourselves, and that plethora of jobs would be for many decades to come.

One of the main elements in its use for power generation is ready access to a constant supply, and we have some of the largest deposits on the Planet.

This small first step may be the forerunner of the discussion on using it ourselves, but why not kill two birds with one stone, euphemistically speaking and include this use for ourselves into the same debate.

Supply of uranium to India means jobs jobs jobs, but conversion to nuclear domestically means restructure of coal and generation industry – too much political risk. Ultimately if we get the world on Aussie nuclear then who cares what we burn ourselves.

large scale moves to nuclear is either
a) economically sensible
b) important/critical to avoidingclimate change
c) both

a) economic sense, we have just legislated to send 650 billion plus overseas to unknown peoples just so we can continue doing what we are now doing for free. This Gov. does not have economic sense.

b) If you believe AGW is serious then Nuke is the way to go, as our gov has no interest in nukes and would rather continue burning coal for the next 40 years (with additional tax revenue) then i think it is safe to say our gov does not believe AGW is a serious issue.

in terms of your comments at (b) it is a common theme here that what australia does in terms of domestic emissions is of no consequence. So if we power the rest of the world with our uranium then that would be of far greater importance than changing to nuclear at home.

Let us make a couple of assumptions, firstly lets assume CO2 is the omni potent force we are told and secondly lets assume Nuclear power is mankinds great white hope. Lets also agree that Australias emissions are dwarfed by others.

Do you think it is a bit hypocritical of us to sell our uranium to the highest bidder in order to save mankind but yet at the same time not use it ourselves due to our “clean energy future” policies?

Do you think it wise that we send 650 + billion overseas to an as yet non existent party for the privilege of maintaining our man kind killing power generation?

Question to Tony, how many nuclear power plants could we build for 650 billion?

If we must have a tax on our power generation emissions do you MattB think it would be prudent and wise to spend the revenue on ways that eliminate these emissions IE Nuclear power generation?

The worst case scenario that the anti Nukes (for any reason) might use, they would cost them from $10 to $12 Billion each.

In actuality, the real price might come in at around $6 Billion each.

15 Nuclear Power Plants, each larger than 2000MW Nameplate Capacity would go a long way towards powering the whole Eastern Sea Board.

Even using the worst case scenario of their $12 Billion, that still only comes in at $180 Billion.

The single most important factor in all of this is not really that cost, but the time taken to get then up and running delivering power, and that of itself would be decades, and all of that would be following any opening of discussions to even do it in the first place.

Lets assume we decide tomorrow to start building a nuke plant so 16th of Nov 2021 it produces its first watt of power in fact we have built 25 of the things at a cost of 300 billion.

What are the advantages?

1) As they produce zero CO2 ALA wind mills imagine how many green jobs we would have created.

2) Our CO2 emissions would have been reduced by well over 5% which is our current impossible goal.

3) Rather than state we will reduce our emissions by 80% albeit 78% via permits we could actually reduce our emissions drastically as oppesed to 2%.

4) by 2050 we could have built another 10 to cover the entire country at a cost (total) of 35 X 12 = 420 billion. That means we will save approx 230 billion and will actually physically reduce our emissions.

So in summary i cannot see a down side, add to that we could build another a nuclear dump site this one purpose built and accept others waste (for a tidy sum).

So where is the down side? Is it just me or am i being lead by idiots?

The great thing about Australia for nuclear power is we have both ends of the the supply chain covered. The question of what to do with all the nuclear fuel “waste” is answered in two ways:

1) There are new designs of nuclear reactor which can actually use Gen III reactor waste as fuel, which means most of the on-site waste repositories at reactors around the world could become potential fuel sources after a hugely expensive reactor replacement program. No idea if that is economically feasible but perhaps someone will start doing it. WHEN Australia builds nuclear reactors we may be better off taking the cutting edge kind that can use old waste as new fuel.

2) It has been known for decades that central Australia is absolutely the unique best site in the entire world for a long-term nuclear waste repository. A site quite close to Olympic Dam in S.A. has been earmarked for a long time. Virtually nobody and no animals live there, or are likely to live anywhere near there in the next thousand years. In the short term Australia has a political system that can be trusted by foreign governments to transport and store the waste. The site has been and will remain tectonically stable in the middle of the Indo-Australian plate for millions of years. And the final argument for safety and integrity is that it is inconceivable that a country that can build submarines and aeroplanes and a species that has sent people to the moon would be incapable of building a sturdy hole in the ground – which has no solid moving parts and doesn’t have to actually do anything.

The money Australia could make by selling repository space to the entire world’s nuclear (and other toxic) waste producers is enormous. The number of new nuclear reactors anticipated to be built in the next 30 years is only going to make the business case stronger.

D’oh, so close. Should have googled for it from the beginning. 7:30 report.

Finding it in Woomera is still a pain. They said it was the size of a football field, and THIS thing (-30.973263,136.475617)certainly looks the size of a football field.
For me the major clue is not just size but spiffy new road leading to it.

Okay that’s my final guess. I do not wish to play Where’s Wally’s Waste? any more.

Sorry if it came across that way (wheres wally) its just that its not talked about so you had to figure it out for your self, no its not a state secret more like a political secret. To this day i do not know how Mike Rann kept a straight face when he proclaimed “there will be no waste dump in SA under a gov i lead” plenty of mileage out of that one for Rann.

Mind you we will have to change it back to “Welcome to South Australia” now that he is gone…..i did think “Welcome to Rannistan” had a nice ring to it.

Helen Caldicott is now obviously demented. Well she’s as loony as most warmists but with the extra arrogance of old age. Somehow the last six years of research haven’t changed an opinion she formed in 1993. And she lays claim to science! And of course she’s a doctor who has to save the dying planet. Because climate science is really anatomy, isn’t it?

It’s a shame, since she probably did more than anyone else in the world to prevent nuclear war. But such is the cycle of life.

Anyway, she did find out the other site for the nuclear dump, it’s mukadi station or muckadee station or something like that in NT. See video.
She also says 1 million people have died from the Chernobyl explosion, which is several orders of magnitude different from the official figure (which is less than 100 IIRC). A coverup wouldn’t surprise me there.

It will only upset those who either:
A) shut their eyes, cover their ears, and chant repeatedly “there is no toxic waste in the world, there is no toxic waste in the world…”

B) believe that anything less than the objectively best solution should be used for the secure storage of high-level waste.

I would also add that the safety of the precious GWB and dugongs is not in question during the shipping of the material to Australia since 1) the containers that are used are stronger than the repository, and 2) the Ghan railway permits material to be sent to via Darwin or Adelaide and does not have to travel via the East Coast at all.

Real waste already exists in large quantities and it must be stored.
If not by us, then by whom?
If not here, then where?
If not soon, then when?

Whilst China builds the 3 Gorges dam, Abu Dahbi builds an island and Japan raises an airport out of the sea we dilly dally around like a bunch of morons.

Case in point:

There has been an idea raised in the past where instead of letting the Ord river via the man made lake called Argyle flow out to sea we should build pipe lines down through WA, NT and onto SA to distribute the water.

We could green the desert so to speak, also we could flood ancient in land lakes in SA thus securing our water resources for many years and possibly providing plenty of agriculture oppotunities. We might even be able to drive the odd hydro electric power station…a Greenie utopian world one might say, BUT NO the greenies are opposed.

It is the same for nukes and storage of waste, personally i think we should invest that 650 + billion in thorium reactors (get very little waste) but OK lets spend that money on building nuke plants instead. Build a secure waste dump and charge the world for using it and watch the money roll in.

Pathetic short sightedness with a splash of hypocisy is the problem here

Adding to Tony’s post; future reactors will be able to run on depleted Uranium, which doesn’t need to be dug from anywhere, even more efficient.

I try to push this idea amongst the green movement. Some groups are more receptive than others. I know Greenpeace would rather harvest human souls than use nuclear power but I’m hoping Oxfam will be a little more realistic.

When it comes to nuclear waste from power plants, there are misconceptions in abundance, so let’s then look at the process, from the ‘dirt’ in the ground to the waste going back into the ground.

The uranium already existing as ‘ore’ in the ground already has a partial level of enrichment, and that is typically 0.7%.

150,000 tons of this mined ‘dirt’ will yield around 200 tons of Uranium.

This Uranium then goes through 5 separate processes to convert it to the fuel used in the reactors of Nuclear Power Plants. At the end of those 5 processes, you have the tiny ceramicised pellets, and you have around 24 tons of them.

Those pellets have now been enriched to around 3% to 5% enrichment.

Those pellets are then inserted into the rods for the bundles, different lengths and numbers depending upon if the reactor is a BWR or a PWR, and here I’m only speaking of currently used reactors.

Now why I picked that original 150,000 tons of dirt giving us 24 tons of pellets is this is typically the amount needed for a reactor refuel, which, with judicious use of rods can be made to extend to 18 months, and even longer, because during operation, not all the rod assemblies are exposed.

At the end of this consumption cycle, those rods are typically back down to under 1% enrichment.

The rods are removed from the piles and stored within the reactors for up to 2 further cycles.

At the end of this storage period, the rods can then be removed from the reactors. (Some of the more recent Nuclear plants can actually store the rods within the reactor for the whole life of the plant.) They can either then be sent for re enrichment, which in my opinion, is by far a better option, or sent to a dry storage facility.

At this stage, the pellets in those rods are back down to typically 0.5% enrichment.

Notice something glaring right there?

These rods now have an enrichment level lower than the existing ore still in the ground.

As to the cost, I also selected this original 150,000 tons of raw ‘dirt’ which gives that 24 tons of pellets for the rods, which is the average for one full refuelling cycle.

To get from the dirt in the ground to the rods for the reactor has cost around $53 Million. This is the cost for that 18 months of ‘fuel’ for the reactor.

A large scale Nuclear Power Plant has 2 reactors, so one reactor gets refuelled each year, hence that $53 Million a year for the fuel.

I understand this sounds pretty steep, but now consider a similar sized Coal fired power plant which will burn on average 6 million tons of steaming coal, and the cost of that is considerably greater than $53 Million.

So when it comes to that dreaded phrase, ‘nuclear waste’ all is not really as it has been made out for so long.

I know this sounds like a big ‘ad’ for Nuclear Power, but once people have the whole suite of facts in front of them, it is indeed THE single most attractive option.

I would say the Indian uranium export deal was a direct result of the carbon tax getting through. The Greens and Labor government have done what they would term a pragmatic exchange.

The IAEA is a front for US/EU intelligence agencies. The regulator’s only job is to case a foreign country’s military installations and infrastructure for strategical planning. Of most particular interest is power, water, roads, rail, ports and factories. The Iraq invasion was textbook. They mapped the country and used the cover story that the WMD manufacturing had to have been done in ‘mobile laboratories’.

India gets no attention because there is no plan to invade India. Pakistan is the focal point on the subcontinent and the US rue the fact that they are smart enough not to be a signatory to the NNPT whereby, they would agree to weakening their strategic position through ‘weapon inspections’.

India is more strongly committed to developing the thorium fuel cycle than any other country with a long-established thorium R&D programme which includes plans to utilise thorium in future fast reactors following the breeding of plutonium in its Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs).
India is presently further ahead than any other country in the development of the thorium fuel cycle, but even so the R&D has only progressed on a relatively small scale, with only about 1 tonne of thorium fuel having been irradiated in PHWRs to date.

It’s lining up a customer for Uranium while they still need it, with potential downstream payback in Indian-developed Thorium reactors??

They don’t waste any time, do they? (Personally I always suspected our old buddy Adam Smith was a closet GE nuke salesman, not a Labor staffer.)

And I saw a 2hr documentary on LiFTRs versus PWRs on YouTube and I am sold on Thorium. Huge. Just huge.
Shame the development timeline is 40 years behind PWRs and 20 years behind ITER. But it’s the best, soo, somebody is going to build it, and that somebody looks likely to be India.

This little snippet should be music to the ears of CACC skeptics in that the message about natural climate variability overwhelming human produced CO2 is having more influence in the IPCC. At least at the predicting level:

“And for the future, the draft gives even less succour to those seeking here a new mandate for urgent action on greenhouse gas emissions, declaring:
“Uncertainty in the sign of projected changes in climate extremes over the coming two to three decades is relatively large because climate change signals (presumably caused by human produced CO2 and land clearing?) are expected to be relatively small compared to natural climate variability”.”

That seems to be vigorous back pedaling from the IPCC…. right into valid skeptic territory.

Lindzen and Choi reckon a sensitivity upto 1c the ipcc scientists think 1.5c-4.5c we had 0.7c in the last century and even Santer and co think 0.3-0.6c is normal.seems we are much closer to normal than catastrophe.

That may or may not be so but it has not stopped alarmist scientists from our own CSIRO and others making the wildest predictions about AGW that led the last ALP government in Victoria to be duped into two very expensive white elephant projects viz the North South Pipeline(mothballed yesterday by the new government) and the Wonthaggi desalination plant that is going to cost Victorians for decades.

Had the following statement been around when those knee jerk decisions were being made it may have prevented this enormous waste of taxpayers money for absolutely no benefit:

“Uncertainty in the sign of projected changes in climate extremes over the coming two to three decades is relatively large because climate change signals are expected to be relatively small compared to natural climate variability”.

I notice some cynical skeptics are of the opinion that this confession in a draft by alarmist scientists may be over ridden by the political IPCC cowboy revisionists before the final report is released.

Public enquiry? Is that all? I hope somebody loses their job or goes to jail over this. Fining companies is not enough as it does not send a message of personal responsibility.
You can be almost guaranteed there are engineers on site in that company that have both the capability and willingness to run the numbers and make a rational safety plan. As to why this was either discouraged or ignored is a question the management must answer. Not enough is done to systemically prevent real pollution problems like these multiple Orica incidents.
+ An engineering culture which encourages challenging risk assessments rather than defending them.
+ A political system which provides incentives for companies to report leaks promptly instead of downplaying it or covering it up.

I’ve just watched “Sugar: The Bitter Truth” and found it most helpful on a number of levels. It is a good companion-view alongside of “King Corn” which I watched a couple of times a while back.

The speaker, Robert H. Lustig, M.D., describes “The perfect storm” where ‘Science’, Governmental regulation, Industry and financial interests all come together to create a health crisis of global proportions. I found it very useful to see just one more instance where what is popularly called ‘science’ is actually fallacious, which real science totally refutes, but Governmental regulations maintain the fiction for the sake of financial benefits to some at the cost of ill health for the many.

If you have a problem with obesity, type-two diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, or know someone who does, then you really need to know what’s in this presentation. There is a solution to all these symptoms which is simple but profound and which works.

When you look at this video from another perspective it has all the elements of the “Perfect Storm” of ‘Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming’, aka ‘Climate Change’, aka ‘Climate Disruption’. To whit, defective science, untested assumptions, complicit regulators, vested financial interests, indoctrination via the mass media and uncritical acceptance by the masses. I found watching this video instructive as a clear example of how something that claims to be ‘scientific’ can be so horribly wrong.

last nite ABC radio national and local ABC seemed to be doing non-stop programs, some repeats, on australia’s growing number of poor requiring food assistance etc. yet ABC has been the biggest cheer-leader for the CAGW scam which will impoverish many more. what hypocrites.

13 Nov: NYT: Carbon Trading May Be Ready for Its Next ActBy MARTON KRUPPA AND ANDREW ALLAN | REUTERS
Yet the idea of buying and selling pollution remains attractive, as recent events in Australia show. One-third of global emissions could be capped and traded by the end of the decade, according to some estimates, up from current levels of 6 percent.
“The carbon market is not dead,” said Wolfgang Sterk, a policy analyst with the Wuppertal Institute in Germany. “It is still seen by many as the most flexible way to cut emissions. Australia and California don’t care how low prices are in the E.U.” …
Australia’s law puts the country on par with the European Union when it comes to buying offsets from the international carbon credit market and is expected to soak up 100 million credits annually.
Price stability and offset limits could help convince investors that emission-reduction projects are worthwhile, but Mr. Türk said a lot depends on climate policy…
Since the start of the Kyoto Protocol, Clean Development Mechanism credits have been widely expected to be the main global carbon currency that would link a network of global systems…http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/14/business/energy-environment/carbon-trading-may-be-ready-for-its-next-act.html?_r=1

from WUWT thread, noted the following from University of East Anglia. it’s always been about the money:

15 Nov: UEA: Research calls for a major shake-up of carbon markets
A panel of experts will meet ahead of the Durban climate summit to discuss a new report from the University of East Anglia and University of Sussex which calls for an overhaul of how markets in carbon emissions are governed.
Environmental, economic and development experts will debate whether the commitment to carbon markets is the right approach to tackle climate change at the public event ‘Carbon Markets for the Poor – A Contradiction in Terms?’ on November 15 at UEA London…
The paper, entitled ‘Governing Clean Development: what have we learnt?’ is the third in a series published as part of the Governance of Clean Development project at UEA.
The three-year Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded research programme was set up to explore the politics and governance of clean development in the energy sector…
The paper has been authored by Prof Peter Newell, from the University of Sussex (formerly of UEA) and Jon Phillips, from UEA’s School of International Development…
The panel will be made up of leading carbon market specialists – including Adrian Rimmer, chief executive of the Gold Standard Foundation – a certification body which aims to improve the pro-poor outcomes of CDM projects, Cambridge University’s Prof Michael Grubb, who is also editor in chief of the journal Climate Policy, Craig Bennett, director of Policy and Campaigns at Friends of the Earth and Dr Emily Boyd, Reader in Environmental Change and Human Communities at the University of Reading.
The UK government’s Martin Hession, chair of the CDM Executive Board, will provide reflections on key messages at the end of the debate and Simon Maxwell, a Senior Research Associate at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in London and chair of the Climate Change and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN), will chair the panel.
The public event takes place on November 15 at the UEA London Study Centre, from 7-9pm…http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2011/November/carbonmarkets11

15 Nov: UEA: Low carbon fund gets creative
A £4.5M uplift in European funding to the Low Carbon Innovation Fund (LCIF), based at the University of East Anglia, will result in an overall boost of £10m to the fund, to enable it to be extended to the creative industries.
The newly announced addition to the existing fund of £8 million from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) will be matched by private co-investment and means that around £30 million in all will be invested in businesses in the East of England which want to improve their carbon footprint.
“In tough times, it is very pleasing to be able to be able to invest in the region’s creative industries” said Dr Richard Harvey, Dean of UEA London and Chair of the LCIF Investment Committee…
Vice-Chancellor, Edward Acton, said: “The creative industries make a tremendous contribution to the eastern region and the University itself plays an important role in this field. We have many graduates working in the media, the arts, film and computer design, for example.
“I am delighted that we are able to give businesses working in these areas the benefit of our long-standing expertise in carbon reduction programmes, in addition to the support we are already providing for energy and engineering companies.”…
The additional funding comes soon after the announcement of a £6m contribution by the ERDF to a new Enterprise Centre at the University of East Anglia, which aims to support local companies and foster new business start-ups among staff and students across the Norwich Research Park.http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2011/November/lcifcreative

By the way, Bolt was wrong. I was wrong in my initial impression that he’d been hard done by.http://kangaroocourtofaustralia.com/2011/10/03/when-white-is-too-white-and-black-is-not-black-enough/
Even if you think there is widespread pretence of aboriginality for monetary gain, it doesn’t annul the fact that nearly every claim he made about these people (Cole, Graham, etc) was either factually incorrect or it was only the convenient half of the story. (Presumably skeptics would not argue facts.) The only tragedy is that by publishing racist crap he left himself open to an attack on his reputation that will diminish his ability to bring government shenanigans into the public eye. Bottom line is: Cole is half aboriginal and that ought to be enough for anybody.

I have often wondered why Ron Paul always gets shafted by the MSM when it comes to coverage its like they are doing it intentionally, and then i read this post on CNN.

So by Ron Paul’s insane logic, if I go up to someone on the street and punch them in the face, and then they have the nerve to punch me back, he’s saying that me getting punched is somehow MY FAULT?!

Now this could be American sarcasm or it could be American logic and judging by the way they treat Paul and the way they fawn over their politicians that would look equally as good on a movie set i suspect the latter.

Please any Americans out there that can show me to be wrong……….i implore you to come forward.